3435 Main

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

At first glance, Main Street in Midtown Kansas City might seem a deliriously illegible place. We believe it has all the building blocks of a great urban community, which affirms the complexities, harmonies and contradictions of life in the city. In the span of a few blocks on Main Street, you can find payday loans, self-storage, coin laundry, stumble into a head shop or be ensconced in Italian design at Museo. Burger King will serve you at least five different Whopper varietals, or you can request lean ass on beef for a miraculously simple and perfect sandwich from Gates Bar-B-Q. And, at Oddly Correct, your coffee will arrive too perfect to be graced by milk. Just a few steps away, bands have been rolling through Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club since 1950, which has been called “the last great venue in Kansas City.”

el dorado’s recently completed 3435 Main embraces these contradictions and resolves them in a building that elegantly dives into the city’s dissonant fray. 3435 Main is Kansas City’s first multi-story prefabricated modular housing effort — the 80-apartment, 75,000 square foot building was constructed in a Nebraska factory and craned one-by-one onto a cast-in-place concrete plinth. This construction process has been rarely used in large-scale residential projects and resulted in several dramatic benefits for the project. The process allowed el dorado to pursue a heightened investigation of the building façade — and the resulting undulating aluminum composite gradient adds depth and vitality to the Main St corridor. It’s also an incredibly economical construction method that yielded a super-insulated envelope, acoustically separated party walls, refined detailing and custom finishes.

This project is one of a series of partnerships between el dorado and with MAC Properties. We are proud to have worked with them multiple times over the years, particularly due to Mac Properties’s ambitious approach to planning and restoration across the East-West corridor in Midtown Kansas City. According to Peter Cassel, director of community development for MAC Properties, “Midtown is one the best communities in metropolitan Kansas City. We embrace its history and diversity and chose el dorado for this project because we knew they would create something new which embodied its location and context.” Mac Properties has developed over 2,000 apartments along historic Armour Boulevard, preserving architecturally significant buildings and granting new life to the boulevard. Our previous collaborations with Mac Properties include Interstate Flats in 2017; The Colonnades (100–118 W Armour) in 2017; Commonwealth Bus Shelters in 2011 and Park Central Apartments in 2010.

3435 Main is now home to a community of 140 people for whom the density and intensity of the city is a lure — they’re at the center of everything and it’s all reachable by foot or transit. The building accelerates the compression of the city — whether you’re into Whoppers, real barbecue or the local ingredients of The Russell — it’s at your doorstep. In its context, 3435 Main assertively expresses belief in the dynamism, energy and evolution of the city.